


The Origin Of The Thing With The Peas

by A_Candle_For_Sherlock



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Domesticity, Flashback, Fluff, M/M, Pre-Episode: s03e02 The Sign of Three, Pre-Relationship, and john makes the thing with peas, sometimes sherlock doesn't eat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-15
Updated: 2016-05-15
Packaged: 2018-06-08 12:30:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6854695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/A_Candle_For_Sherlock/pseuds/A_Candle_For_Sherlock
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Sherlock begins rambling at the wedding dinner, trying to keep his speech going while he scans the room for a murderer, the things he says about John off the top of his head are pretty revealing. John means home to him--small, sweet things, jumpers and singing and cooking with peas. This is where the thing with the peas began.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Origin Of The Thing With The Peas

“And she’d left the bloody steak knife there deliberately, John; she’d used it on several raw steaks before she came around to meet us. We almost sent it in for testing! It was very nearly perfect. She’d thought it all through. A fantastic criminal mind. That was my most interesting case in weeks, and right after the one with the rusty lawnmower blades ended so–so–”  
  
“Terribly predictably?” John suggested, smiling. He’d been drying the dishes while he listened, surreptitiously watching Sherlock’s dark head and slender back while he leaned over the kitchen table, talking, gesturing grandly with a beaker in one hand, checking the components of the experiment he’d left to develop on its own for nearly a week. Sherlock was thrumming with energy, his happiness clear in his voice–-high on the thrill of the surprising resolution of what had turned out to be a five day marathon of a case. Then Sherlock went quiet. His head hung down and he braced himself on the table. “Sherlock?”  
  
Sherlock turned, but without his usual elegance–-he actually staggered slightly and his face was pale, his mouth opening in surprise. John took two steps to the table and pulled out a chair. “Sit down before you fall down,” he said quietly. Sherlock sat, wide-eyed. “How long since you’ve eaten?” Even as he asked he was pulling out an apple, chopping it into slices with a few quick strokes. He put it down on the table.  
  
Sherlock reached for a piece and then hesitated, holding it. “I might throw up.”  
  
Sherlock’s hands were trembling gently, a signal John knew to look for after several years in private practice. Low blood sugar. “You’re probably so hungry you don’t feel hungry,” he said in an even tone, “but you’re going to eat this and I’m going to make you something better while you do.”  
  
It was evidence of how far gone Sherlock was that he didn’t even offer a token protest. He ate the slices, at first in small bites and then ravenously, while John dumped leftover takeout into a saucepan, Chinese fried rice and sticky-sweet chicken and saltily aromatic soy sauce, then added fresh butter and peas.  
  
The melting butter began to sizzle in the pan. Sherlock slumped down in his chair, the apple finished. “Maybe the whole five days. I don’t remember,” he murmured.  
  
“What?”  
  
“Since I’ve eaten.”  
  
“Since you’ve–-Sherlock. That is ridiculous.”  
  
Sherlock’s eyebrows lifted just a bit. “Says the man in Mrs. Hudson’s old apron, mixing takeout with peas.”  
  
“And onions, and garlic,” John said, chopping. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Sherlock smile to himself, the lovely smile without edges that John secretly thought of as all his. The trembling had stopped. John stirred the vegetables into the pan, poured a glass of water and set it in front of him. “Drink.”  
  
Sherlock drank.  
  
“What on earth did you do before me, Sherlock?” John asked rhetorically. He shook pepper and salt into the pan, added coriander and cardamom. The sweetly fiery smell of the food was permeating the air and he was starting to feel a little weak-kneed, too. “I mean, would you just have collapsed where you stood?”  
  
“John! I would never have–-” Sherlock scoffed and then gave it up and grinned. “Probably. Well, not collapsed, but I would have sat down on the floor rather suddenly, and then pulled myself together and gotten myself to the living room and slept right there on the sofa. And when I woke Mrs. Hudson would have left biscuits and tea on the table. I had quite a lot of biscuits and tea.”  
  
“That’s insane,” John said mildly. “That’s no way to live. You’d have been dead in a decade.” He meant it as a joke, but Sherlock’s face grew still and he turned his uncanny oceanic eyes toward John, glowing with quiet light.  
  
“Yes,” he said, “I would have.”  
  
For a long moment they stood there, looking at each other while the fridge hummed softly and the food sputtered and hissed on the stove.  
  
—-  
  
“And he can cook,” Sherlock says distractedly, pacing the floor, intent on the prospect of murder at a wedding, alight with concentrated energy. “Does a–-a thing. Thing with peas…” And even as John waits with his heart hammering in his chest for the moment he’ll be needed, understanding now that something is very wrong, a warmth spreads through him. The smallest things hold significance at the conclusion of the story of two men and their frankly ridiculous adventures, as the bigger story begins.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic inspired by this moment from The Sign of Three: 
> 
> SHERLOCK: Weddings are great! Love a wedding.  
> MARY (quietly, to John): What’s he doing?  
> JOHN (watching his friend with concern): Something’s wrong.  
> SHERLOCK (pointing towards him as he heads back along the room): And John’s great, too! Haven’t said that enough. Barely scratched the surface. I could go on all night about the depth and complexity of his ... jumpers ...  
> (John closes his eyes in disbelief. Out on the floor Sherlock is pacing and turning back and forth, peering at each of the male guests and their imaginary tags.)  
> SHERLOCK: ... and he can cook. Does ... a ... thing ... thing with peas ...  
> (John and Mary exchange a puzzled glance. Sherlock continues to pace and look closely at the guests.)  
> SHERLOCK: ... once. Might not be peas. Might not be him. But he’s got a great singing voice ... or somebody does.
> 
> [transcript by Ariane DeVere at livejournal.com]


End file.
